A Long Time

It's been a long time since our last post. We figured everyone had stopped visiting the blog, but we've heard from a few people that wanted updates. So here we are! Hannah is doing amazingly well. She has progressed so much in the last couple months, that she almost seems like a different person. Dayna will say every few days "She's a little girl now, not a baby!". Hannah is walking, and saying a couple words. She also knows the sign for "More" (which to her means "Eat"). We just lost her speech therapist, but hope to have a new one assigned soon. Dayna just had her last day at her employer, and starts teaching tennis (again) next week. She's really excited about the change. We're not sure what we're going to do about day care. The club has a child care, and I think we'll end up having Hannah there 2-3 days per week. The problem is that there aren't many other children there for her to socialize with. So we've decided (for now) to have her in regular day care 2-3 days a week and the other days she'll be at the club. We just got back from visiting friends and family in the Pacific NW. We finally got to introduce Hannah to her Grandmothers (only 1 more to go!) and some other relatives that hadn't seen her yet. It was a wonderful trip, and it was really hard to leave. Hopefully, we'll be back in that area permanently within 1-2 years. Please feel free to leave a comment to let us know there are still people visiting!!

9/2/07

Meeting Hannah (Video)

This is a link to a video from our first day with Hannah. The video is just under 5 minutes long and begins with our meeting Hannah at the Picasso Orphanage.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4517772567956310096

8/23 Update

Sorry I haven't updated the blog in a while. There hasn't been a lot of free time lately. Here are a few pics that we took of Hannah in the last week. She's really progressing very well. She's crawling a lot, and is even able to pull herself up to a standing position (with a little help). She can't stand on her own, but I think she'll be walking very soon.

One Month Update

Well, it's been 1 month since we brought Hannah into our family. She is progressing really well at home, and we couldn't be happier to have her home. We will be bringing her to day care this week for the first time. We know it will be hard to have her with strangers all day, but we don't have much choice in the matter.

Here are some photos from home. We'll try to post more soon!

Coming Home Early

We found out this afternoon that we're leaving for Hanoi tomorrow evening. We're having our Visa interview on Friday, and should be able to pick up Hannah's Visa on Monday afternoon. We've already changed our return flights, and will be leaving on Monday night. We get into Los Angeles around 10pm Monday night. We'll spend the night near the airport and fly from LAX to PHX on Tuesday morning. We're looking forward to getting home. We miss our family, we miss our friends, and we miss our dogs. We can't wait to get settled in and start building a routine with Hannah.

We're Making Progress

Well, it hasn't exactly been a busy week, but we've made a lot of progress the last couple days. We've applied for Hannah's passport, gone through our CIS interview, and had our medical exam all since yesterday. The only thing we have left in HCMC is picking up Hannah's Vietnamese passport, which we do on Friday. We should be flying to Hanoi on Sunday. If the schedule goes as planned, we'll have our Visa interview in Hanoi on Monday and get Hannah's Visa on Tuesday. We might have the opportunity to fly back to the U.S. on Tuesday night.

We haven't done a ton of sightseeing while we've been here. We did go to a great buffet dinner with our group this weekend. They had a ton of food (most of which was unrecognizable to us) and even some entertainment. They had a band playing and also had a young woman doing a kind-of fire eating/dancing thing. The rest of our meals have been good as well. The hotel has a buffet breakfast which we've hit each day. We've been trying a lot of rice, noodles, sushi, etc. for lunch & dinner. We decided we needed a change tonight, so we went to an Italian restaurant nearby. It was very good and a good change of pace from the Asian food we've been eating so much of. We've got the next two days to ourselves, so we're going to do more sightseeing. We'll hit the War Remnants Museum tomorrow.

Hannah is doing amazingly well. It will take her a long time to get caught up, but she's making great progress. She's very talkative, and seems to love the sound of her own voice (like her Mommy). She also loves staring at her hands/fingers. When we go out, we put her in her Snugli, which she loves. She's able to fall asleep in it, which is really helpful when we're out in a restaurant. We've gotten pretty good at knowing what she needs and why she's crying (especially Dayna). She's eating very well, and sleeping very well. In fact, the last few nights she's slept straight through the night. She's been going to bed around 8pm and getting up around 5-6 am.

We'll write more when we get a chance. Enjoy the pics!